Boston's
Seafood

Where
Clambakes and Shore Dinners are Weekend Rituals

by John Mariani

Boston's
finest

Ever
the enthusiastic gourmand and entrepreneur, Captain John Smith sent
a dispatch from New England back to Queen Elizabeth in 1606 with
the giddy announcement that every "man, woman and childe, with
a small hooke and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent
fish, at their pleasures. And is it not a pretty sport, to pull
up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence, as fast as you can haule
and were a line?"

Smith was hardly exaggerating, for the waters off the New England
coast teemed with two-hundred pound cod and its shores were littered
with lobsters—some six feet long—piled two feet high.

The
oldest restaurant in Boston

The
sea is inextricably tied to the gastronomy of New England, where
clambakes and shore dinners are weekend rituals. From the lobster
shacks on the coast to the fine dining restaurants throughout the
region, New England menus specialize in seafood of every imaginable
form. Boston not only pulls in the best of the catch but also exports
much of it.

For
a real rush of historicity you can do no better than to hit the
shucking bar at Boston’sUnion Oyster Bar,
since 1826 occupying premises where in 1771 the first issues of
the radical MassachusettsSpy were published.
Later it was headquarters for the first paymaster of the Continental
Army and guest quarters for France’s Duke of Chartres, who
became King Louis Philippe. Maine entrepreneur Charles Foster, who
invented the toothpick, paid Harvard men to dine here and demand
a toothpick at meal’s end. Everyone from Daniel Webster to
the Kennedy clan has bellied up to the oyster bar here, where there
is an upstairs "Kennedy Booth," carefully maintained by
current owners Joe and Mary Ann Milano, who also serve a good chowder
and a platter of lobster Newburg.

Shucking
away at Union Oyster House

A
year after the Union
Oyster House opened, along came Durgin-Park in Faneuil Hall, a true eating house with communal tables that is
famous for its cadre of carefully coached, brusque waitresses who
are part of the fun. The food after all these years is basic and
flawless old New England favorites like hot cornbread, succulent
baked scrod, steaming Indian pudding and some of the last surviving
Boston baked beans in a city once called "Beantown." Touristy,
yes, but locals know to come up in through the downstairs bar to
avoid the lines out the front door.

Incidentally, the classic scrod in white wine and lemon—as
well as the Parker House roll—was a dish created at the Parker
House in the 19th century and still going strong. An interesting
historical fact about the Parker House is that both Ho Chi Minh
and Malcom X once worked there!

Pray that she’s serving her bacon-wrapped monkfish with lentils
and baby carrots. Also delicious are her Arctic char with braised
beets, fresh horseradish and potato nests; and her halibut with
morels, ramps and pea coulis. Seafood entrees average in the mid-$30s.

In Boston’s Little Italy section, the North End, Bricco has emerged as one of the best Italian restaurants in America. Marisa
Iocco and Rita D'Angelo break free of the clichés of the
neighborhood's menus, and their Italian seafood is superlative,
like pappardelle with scallops and wild asparagus in a lobster broth;
rigatoni teeming with lobster meat with golden pea tendrils and
a saffron sauce; and a whole grilled sea bass with "Easter
egg" potatoes, olives and herbs. There's an $85 five-course
menu worth every penny. Otherwise a three-course meal will run about
$45-$50

Meritage

I’ve
admired chef Daniel Bruce at the Boston Harbor Hotel,
and now he has his dream restaurant, Meritage,
where his menus are match-ups with wines based on flavor components.
Dishes, available in small or large plates (priced at $15 and $29
respectively), are designed, according to Bruce—a native New
Englander and head chef for the annual Boston Wine Festival—to
be "flavorful but subtle, not allowing any flavor to overwhelm
the wines." That philosophy is evident in his black and white
shrimp cannelloni with saffron cream and sautéed spinach;
his wood-grilled Atlantic swordfish in a spiced Riesling, with orange
and coconut essence; and his grilled sea scallops with morels and
sugar snap peas, class acts all around.

Incidentally, despite its name, situation and publicity, the tourist-driven Anthony’s Pier 4is not worth the wait, the
money, or the time. But if you do go, stick to the raw bar, the
boiled lobsters and a great bottle of wine.

John
Mariani is well known for his frank and poignant
writing in Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection.
He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food
& Drink, The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and co-author, with his wife, of the Italian-American
Cookbook.